Full text databases

Full text databases can contain journal articles, reports or even whole books in full text. The reader consequently gets access to the complete text on the computer screen.Sometimes material exists only as references also in a full text database. If that is the case, there is generally the possibility to limit your search to those documents that are available in full text.

Full text documents constitute the greater part of the database. If a document is available in full text it means you can find the complete document in the database, and that it can be printed, saved to a floppy disc, or e-mailed to the user. Normally the article is available in html- or PDF-format. The latter also contains figures, formulae and photos.

One example of a full text database is Academic Search Elite which covers mainly the fields of social science and humanities, and index about 29000 journals, 1360 of which are in full text. Half of these journals are scientific.

Ebrary is another example of a full text database which contains books in English in most subject areas. It comprises over 20.000 titles from the big leading publishers. The whole contents of the books are searchable and you can make your own ‘library’, where you collect texts you have chosen from different books. You can also print pages to a limited extent.

Anne-Marie Pettersson
2005-06-20